Electronic imaging devices such as digital cameras and video recorders have become extremely widely used as image quality and usability have improved and cost has gone down. Acceptance of digital cameras which capture still images has grown as the resolution and quality of their image sensors and of photographic printers has increased. Relatively inexpensive digital cameras are currently available whose image sensors have millions of picture elements (pixels). Digital video cameras are also gaining acceptance as they gain features such as low-light sensitivity, infrared detection, and digital zoom, with their resolution at least as good as analog consumer video cameras.
However, users must still carry two different digital imaging devices for simultaneously capturing quality still images and video. Many digital cameras now include a mode for recording short segments of low quality video at a low frame rate with poor sound, and many digital video cameras can capture still images, but at the relatively lower resolution used in video cameras.
These imaging devices which attempt to bridge the gap between digital cameras and video recorders thus perform only one of the two tasks well, either capturing higher resolution still images or lower resolution video. Typically, these imaging devices are based on an image sensor which can produce at least two resolutions at the output, one higher than the other, but only one at a time. The image sensor generally includes internal circuitry for reducing the resolution at the output from the maximum, and this circuitry can be enabled or disabled to filter the output. Thus, the image sensor can either produce the maximum resolution at the output or a reduced resolution, but not both. Because digital cameras and video recorders use image sensors with either a single available resolution or these multi-resolution image sensors with separately selectable resolutions, the digital imaging devices are configured for one type of imaging. Furthermore, because of these limitations, the digital imaging devices are typically designed to do only one thing well, with badly performing secondary modes.
Users of these digital imaging devices are thus forced to either use two different devices for quality still imaging and video recording, or to use only one device but settle for high quality images in only one of two modes.